Data from: Assessing the effectiveness of a national protected area network in maintaining carnivore populations

Protected areas (PAs) are essential to prevent further biodiversity loss
yet their effectiveness varies largely with governance and external
threats. Although methodological advances have permitted assessments of PA
effectiveness in mitigating deforestation, we still lack similar studies
for the impact of PAs on wildlife populations. Here we demonstrate the
application ofuse an innovative combination of matching methods and
hurdle-mixed models with a large-scale and long-term dataset of
unprecedented coverage for Finland’s large carnivore species. We show that
the national PA network , at the national level, PAs does not support
higher densities than non-protected habitat for 3 of the 4 species
investigated. For the brown bear, PAs appear to have lower densities than
non-protected areas. For some species, PA effects interact with region or
time, i.e. wolverine densities decreased inside PAs over the study period
and lynx densities increased inside eastern PAs. Although we show that
matching approaches could and should be applied to wildlife population
data, Wwe support their application of matching methods in combination of
additional analytical frameworks for deeper understanding of conservation
impacts on wildlife populations. These methodological advances are crucial
for improving PA targets and extremely timely for preparing ambitious PA
targets a post-2020 global framework for biodiversity.